Castle - unclassified

The National Monuments Service's description

On the fairly flat floor of the Nore river valley, on a slight terrace c. 1m above the flood plain. Within a large bawn (KK009-002003-) c. 40m W of the River Nore. According to O’Kelly (1969, 12) this property was owned by the Grace family. Carrigan (1905, vol. 2, 326) describes it as, ‘an ancient keep with a very large Elizabethan house attached. Not a stone of it now remains over another, even its foundations having been all uprooted in 1849 or 1850’. However, it may have been levelled by 1839 as it is not depicted on the 1st (1839) ed. OS 6-inch map nor is it mentioned in the accompanying OS Letters. An antiquarian sketch, viewed from the SE, shows a castle with a later 16th-century house added onto the S side, all within a large bawn (Lightbrown 1985, 168). The castle, in the background of the sketch, has a ground-floor entrance in the E wall and has single-light windows at four levels above the doorway, though some may be inter-mural, perhaps indicating the position of a stair. The uppermost window in the S gable has two-lights. There is a parapet at the top with a bartizan on the NE angle. It is not visible at ground level. The ruins of another building are depicted N of the castle consisting of a N gable and large, two-storey high, round-headed opening in the E wall.

Compiled by: Jean Farrelly

Date of upload: 20 June 2016

References

O'Kelly, O. 1969 (Reissue 1985) The place-names of County Kilkenny. Kilkenny.

Carrigan, Rev. W. 1905 (Reprint 1981) The history and antiquities of the diocese of Ossory, 4 vols. Kilkenny. Roberts Books and Wellbrook Press.

Lightbrown, R. W. 1985 Some eighteenth and early nineteenth century visitors to Killkenny. (Part two). Old Kilkenny Review 3 (2), 161-73.